It has been supposed by some writers on the subject--and the popular notion at the time certainly was that the mountainous country suddenly ended at the western slopes of the Rangeworthy hills to the west of Spion Kop--that Acton Homes was situated on a level plain, and that Sir Charles Warren had only to march round by Acton Homes, keeping the Rangeworthy hills and Spion Kop at a respectful distance, and he would be able with little delay to take the lines opposing Potgieter’s Drift in reverse. It does not appear whether Sir Redvers Buller entertained this idea; if he did, he gave no definite instructions, apparently, in that sense to Sir Charles Warren; but if he did not, then he must have supposed that the Boer right flank rested on the Rangeworthy hills and could be turned, and was unaware that it extended to Acton Homes and the roads to the Orange Free State. We can hardly suppose that when he wrote of sending Sir Charles Warren to turn the Boer flank he expected Sir Charles Warren to accomplish on the Rangeworthy hills, with 12,000 men and no long-range guns, what he himself had been unwilling to attempt a week before at Potgieter’s Drift with 20,000 men and long-range guns. If he did, he was sending him on a hazardous undertaking, and yet this was what opening the Fair View and Rosalie road practically meant--an attack on the centre of the Boer position. We have already alluded to the prejudice created against Sir Charles Warren by the unfortunate suggestion that while Sir Redvers Buller desired him to go by the Acton Homes road, he preferred the nearer road to Groote Hoek and Rosalie. It is now clear that, if Lord Roberts had not alluded to Acton Homes in this connection, the idea would never have entered any one’s head, because such a route in the circumstances was impossible. It might have been the conception of a military genius to have thought that the best way of relieving Ladysmith would be to strike at the communications of the Orange Free State Boers on the Harrismith and other roads; but this we need not consider, as it certainly did not suggest itself to Sir Redvers Buller. Had Sir Charles Warren’s force been composed mainly of well-trained mounted troops, and had the country been less hilly, possibly the aspect of affairs would have been changed, and he might have made a real wide turning movement; but he had hardly any mounted troops, and the country was very hilly. He was, in fact, told to do an impossible thing--to turn a flank at a point where there was no flank to turn. As Mr. J. B. Atkins observes in his ‘Relief of Ladysmith’: ‘It had been discovered that after all there was no way round to the back of Spion Kop through open country. The hills in which the Boers were are, in fact, a spur of the Drakensberg mountains: wherever Sir Charles Warren might go, he must go through mountains.